How to open a .aid file?

[howhardcanthisbe]

Computer didn't crash I just closed an illustrator file without saving it*. Autosave is set up for every 2 minutes and I can see the autosaved version .aid but can't figure how to open it.

Thanks for any help on this.

(*I accidentally closed it because there is some key combination which I inadvertently do which changes my keyboard from English to French and then  the Z becomes X - so when I do control Z I've actually done control X - wish I knew how I did that).

[Jacob Bugge]

howhard,

What happens if you change the name and also change the extension to .ai or to .ait?

I am afraid the OS may have a life of its own, and that the language change can happen at any time, especially if you have a keyboard version that is another language (such as FR) than the OS (such as EN).

[howhardcanthisbe]

Thanks Jacob, Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to try it. My first attempts said "the file is in use" so I closed Illustrator and the .aid files vanished. I have now recreated the work.

[Andy Swift · Accepted solution]

You can just open the file with Adobe Illustrator.

To open the file on a Mac, select it, cmd-I to "Get Info" and choose open with Adobe Illustrator (click "Change All..." while you're at it so the next time you won't have to do this step).

• Do NOT change the extension

• Do NOT quit Illustrator or the file will be deleted

If you want to restart or do something else that requires you to quit Illustrator, you can just duplicate the .aid file and let the original get deleted.

[carmcalabrese]

This is a hit or miss, but worth trying. Sometimes the files simply won't open due to being corrupted and you're sadly out of luck.

[clarissad92454039]

It says the file is unknown and cant be open:/

[Anjani P.]

this works!! thank you very much

[Schatxe]

This solution works!! Thank you so much. 

[Stephanie268504596xba]

This does not work. I get an error message saying "There is no application set to open the document “AIDBTemp17064948464533231616.aid”."
I've tried opeing it in illustrator beta and the regular illustrator, but they are both greyed out for me.

[Anshul_Saini]

Hi @Stephanie268504596xba,

I'm sorry to hear that you're experiencing difficulty opening the .aid file. Could you please upload the file to a cloud storage service like Google Drive and share the download link here or via DM with me? I'll do my best to assist you in recovering the file and resolving the issue.

Best regards,

Anshul

[nickt53978232]

The method works well. Thanks a lot :ukraine:

[Mike_Gondek]

The keyboard command you are likely encountering is under your system preference >> keyboard >> shortcuts tab >> Input Sources

Was happening to me with Arabic, when that language installed.

I also recommend to change this,

so you can see and confirm up on top right in finder you language options.

[Martha5F98]

I have tried to recover a file that was unsaved when illustator crashed. I followed the suggestions on this thread to open the .aid file, it was trying to open the .aid file on illustrator but then stopped spinning and I watched the file disappear. Illustrator hasn't actually crashed and I haven't had any pop ups but the file has gone. Is there any way to retrieve it or atleast try to prevent this happening again? I am running the programme on a new MacBook Pro M1 Big Sur 11.1 with plenty of storage but illustrator is crashing reguarly.

Any help would be great!

[Lise James]

Illustrator is regularly crashing on me as well and I can not recover the [Recovery].ai files. I bought this Mac laptop because it was supposed to be a workhorse for graphic designers. In actuallity I wish I could find out the reason for all of the crashes instead of constantly losing my time-consuming hard work. Ugh... Makes me question why I am working with a program that resides on the cloud, but does not have the capability of actually saving my work to the cloud with an easy to recover option after these numerous crashes. I have not been able to open the .aid files either. 
Here is a screen shot from the latest wheel-of-death crash. 

[Monika Gause]

Please contact Customer Care and have take a look at it. I have Macbooks as well and Illustrator is regularly running on them for days.